Introduction
The question that manufacturers and retailers are — or perhaps, should be — asking themselves, after two years where “value” dominated trading conversations, is: Am I still relevant to shoppers? The consumer Value Equation — our theme in 2023 — is now table stakes, not a differentiator. As of autumn of 2025, the American consumer has maintained their spending, but unit and trip growth remain a challenge. Interviews with industry leaders reinforce this challenge: Shoppers continue to scrutinize their value equation, fragment trips across channels and reward frictionless, personalized experiences.
The new mandate for 2026 is Relevance — earned through enhanced precision (data, AI and measurement), more distinctive propositions (assortment, experience, brands/private brands) and emerging operating models that turn efficiency into growth.
Gaining relevance has never been more urgent, with the industry facing a disruptive moment that has been building for several years. In 2023, PoweRanking focused on “shopper-defined value,” providing a framework for changes that were needed to drive continued growth and profitability. This needed evolution gained urgency throughout 2024, with “The Growth Mandate”, the 2024 PoweRanking theme, escalating the challenge but maintaining that manufacturers and retailers needed to tackle it together. After another year without clearer macroeconomic outcomes, and arguably more uncertainty, shoppers’ assertiveness around choiceful purchasing has brought this urgency to a near-existential level. In a shifting, competitive landscape, industry participants will be left no option but to recalibrate and redesign to be relevant for the moment. Our PoweRanking study for 2025 marks this pivot point, and we believe the coming year will witness shifts that define the Relevance Reset.
Note: Quotes from interviews have been lightly edited for clarity.
Against the backdrop of a consumer that is eager to examine their purchasing choices, and the dizzying array of technologies available to engage them, the challenge of maintaining relevance applies across multiple players and functionalities within the industry. The Kantar team believes that there are four areas that will witness battles for relevance (the 4R model) in 2026 and beyond:
Relevant retail (channels)Deliver a seamless omnichannel experience to convert trips and build baskets.
Relevant products (brands)Introduce differentiated, breakthrough innovation to capture shopper attention and grow categories.
Relevant media (RMNs)Prove that retail media is truly additive as a part of brand’s marketing mix.
Relevant technology (operational AI)Move beyond the pilot phase to holistically impact the complete value chain across demand, supply, and shelf execution.
In 2024, we highlighted how power had been shifting towards the shopper, a reflection of how macroeconomic pressures were forcing choices that challenged both retailers and manufacturers. This reflects the challenge that both manufacturers and retailers have in driving relevance among their shoppers. Our 4R relevance model for 2025 highlights both the centrality of the shopper and the combined responsibility that both sets of industry players have in maximizing relevance.
Winning with the 4R Relevance Model: Strategic Imperatives for 2026 and Beyond
Relevant Retail: Reacquire Trips and Baskets with Omnichannel Precision
The last few years have tested retailers’ total-store value propositions. In addition to examining the collective price positioning of the categories they carry, retailers also have looked to build capability to exceed shoppers’ expectations of the omnichannel experience. As shoppers seek more control over their time, budgets and priorities, retailers will have to continue working towards precision at scale to meet this need. With tariff pressures and potential inflation remaining considerations coming into 2026, the balancing act will remain critical
Strategy:Retailers and manufacturers must work together to win back lost trips and expand basket size by delivering seamless, mission-based shopping experiences across all channels and touchpoints. This means leveraging first-party data and supplier insights to understand shopper missions (e.g., weekly stock up, quick fill in, wellness), and then designing both physical and digital journeys that make it easy for shoppers to complete those missions — whether in-store, via pickup or online. Personalization, convenience and frictionless execution are essential, as is the ability to adapt quickly to changing shopper behaviors.
Mission-based basket design: Use retailer first-party data and supplier insights to map top ‘jobs to be done’ ... and merchandise accordingly across store, app and last mile.
Consumers love the pickup because ... they can also stick to a particular budget if they're doing things online only buying the things that they potentially need. So we're really seeing that place of e-commerce pick up.
Relevant Products: Differentiate Beyond Price — Innovation and Disciplined Private Brands
The industry has witnessed changes in the overall mix of products on shelf as private label has accelerated its position in many categories. However, retailers still need category-driving innovation from national brands, as they face challenges in growing shopper trips and baskets. Notably, the increased use of social media — as both a marketing channel and a purchase channel — provides clues that national brands have a clear role to play in driving demand for categories.
Strategy:With value now a baseline expectation, growth depends on creating relevant reasons for shoppers to choose your brand or store. This implies investing in breakthrough innovation, focused on emerging benefit spaces like health and wellness, sustainability and elevated at-home experiences. Retailers and manufacturers should pilot new products and concepts quickly, scale winners and ensure that private label growth is accretive to the category (not just shifting share). The most successful trading partners will be those who jointly ideate fresh ideas, collaborate on innovation pipelines, and move fast together. At Kantar, we have always believed that brands have to be meaningfully different and salient to drive better outcomes and this has never been more the case with the Relevance Reset.
Innovation is huge, right? We were starved from innovation for probably 18 to 24 months with COVID, right? Innovation is back to levels we saw pre-COVID and it's such a big deal.
What we look for are innovators in the space that are not only bringing new and exciting lines, but they're also looking at their current lines and finding ways to increase the value proposition of some of those key items for our customers through innovation.
Relevant Media: Make Retail Media Provably Additive
Conversations between manufacturers and retailers around retail media networks witnessed a notable change in tenor over the course of 2025. After experiencing a massive growth in capabilities, infrastructure and funding levels over the post-COVID era, RMNs have become the focus of more strategic conversations — and heightened expectations that match the new reality. As retailers have been calling for greater marketing spending to fund their retail media, brands have been asking questions around its incrementality and efficacy when compared to other media formats and channels.
Where both manufacturers’ and retailers’ needs converge is in satisfying shopper demand that drives incremental unit growth in ways that are profitable for both parties.
Strategy:Retail media is now a major revenue and growth engine, but its credibility depends on transparent, standardized measurement and a clear demonstration of incrementality. Retailers and brands must collaborate on shared definitions, cleanroom analytics and experiment design to ensure that retail media spend is truly driving new sales, not just shifting existing demand. The focus must be on building trust, unlocking new budgets, and making retail media accountable for business outcomes.
Retail media is becoming a significant factor in retailer-manufacturer relationships, with retailers creating separate organizations to tap into manufacturers' marketing budgets rather than trade dollars.
Retailers are structuring separate growth teams to unlock brand marketing budgets, while demonstrating outcomes to brands via pilots and sponsored placement experiments. Outcome-based RMN briefs tied to units, penetration, and repeat are becoming the norm.
Relevant Technology: Operationalize AI Together Across Demand, Shelf and Supply
As RMNs have spent 2025 moving into a phase of maturity, artificial intelligence tools have moved into one of ubiquity as the multiple use cases addressed through AI technology have increased their mindshare among all players in the industry. However, at many companies, AI successes are confined to the pilot stage, and there remains an opportunity to embed AI to optimize ongoing commercial execution. To do so, the industry must collaborate to connect disparate, interrelated systems in ways that allow AI to truly enhance both the shopper experience and operating profitability.
Strategy:AI is moving from isolated pilots to enterprise-wide platforms that touch every part of the value chain — from forecasting and allocation to shelf execution and shopper engagement. To unlock its full potential, retailers and manufacturers must align on data standards, taxonomy and privacy (often via clean rooms), and co-develop AI-powered tools that drive speed, accuracy and personalization. The organizations that scale AI collaboratively will be able to personalize, optimize and innovate faster than those relying on manual or siloed approaches.
AI and personalization are expected to play a significant role in retail, with the development of AI agents that assist customers in making purchasing decisions and managing shopping lists.
AI is a tool that is only useful to you if you know how to use them. And if companies aren't investing the dollars to bring in talent to be able to stay on the forefront of that, they will definitely be left behind.
